About Wry

Some of the posts are for students, and others are written for host families. Feel free to post comments. Email me at WryExchange at gmail dot com. This blog isn't updated. I have retired from high school exchange volunteering, but some of the information may still be relevant.
Former About Wry: I try to help our world, one person at a time, as a volunteer for High School Foreign Exchange Students. I have depression, DID, and ADD. My thoughts are non-linear, my memory sucks, and I'm snarky.

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Anca made it home safely after over 24 hours of travel. Merry Christmas, kid! Fearless Leader Flo got her way, and terminated the student. No rule violation, just ‘a pain in the ass.’ Flo didn’t like the girl, and made it personal. The second host family didn’t work out, and Anca had a few other homes lined up, including with the family of the student in her Fesland home. Flo believes Anca is just a bad kid, and a new family won’t make a difference. Maybe yes, maybe no. Give the girl a chance. Anca has changed a lot in the last 4 months.

Flo didn’t talk to hardly anyone about her plan this time. She flat out didn’t return calls or emails. I got into a fight with her about it, she said she didn’t ‘appreciate my interference.’ Husband tried to talk sense into her, but she didn’t care. In almost 20 years of exchange, I have NEVER seen an adult go after a child like that. Flo acted as neighbor-didn’t believe the student at all, behaved as counselor, country specialist, and head of our program.

Beside the injustice, we have two practical problems.
1-We have a student in Anca’s home. If I was Anca’s parents, or the country specialist, the other student would be on a plane home immediately. Retaliation isn’t right, and it’s not a situation we see often, but it’s not unheard of. I warned our student to be a perfect exchange student. It wouldn’t take much to cook up a flimsy excuse to terminate her.
2-We have two students who want to go to Anca’s country next year. What do you think the chances are they’ll wish to continue exchanging with us?

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Nope, not France. More like Fesaly. She is not happy. I would say miserable. She has talked with her program in FESaly, and I hope she conveyed our apologies. One person with much power shipped her home, and it was the wrong decision, and hurts Anca and our program.